Silly & Awkward

Learn the system. Know the playbook. Understand the formula.

It was only a few months into my last corporate employment when I started to feel a step behind. I had it in my head that if I could fill this little gap quickly, I would thrive and achieve there.

I had slipped into the “secret ingredient trap.” There must be some magic dust that would change my game.

Whether it was my job or my health, the search for the elusive ingredient was never-ending. Acquire the magic dust and success would follow. Or fitness. Or restfulness. Or happiness.

The difference between what challenged me, and what seemed to come easy to others, became an obsession. My obsession, of course, only made things worse. I read blogs, watched videos, and listened to podcasts. Always reaching…

My belief in what *I lacked* froze my *desire to do.*

During the lowest point of this job, I gained 30 pounds and took on more stress than I thought imaginable. But, the desire that was frozen more than any other was my desire to create.

Practice Creating = Create Change

So I decided to practice writing. But, I could have chosen (and still could) to paint, to sketch, create music, or learn to stack beautiful rock walls.

Yes, my start line felt silly and awkward:

“Stuck again.”
“You’re doing it wrong.”
“Where’s this really going?”

My internal self-critics were relentless.

But, for reasons a little deeper than I can explain, I stayed the course. Every morning, I would write ideas and look for additional concepts upon which I could expand.

How did I come up with new ideas every day? I would start by answering some of the following questions:

• What did I practice new today?
• What new distraction did I resist and how?
• What thought, that many people assume is true, did I challenge?
• What is an intriguing story from my past and what lesson or lessons eventually revealed themselves from it in subsequent years?
• What simple idea can I take and complicate?
• What complicated idea can I take and simplify?
• Somebody in my world needs a personal message from me… who is it and what can I share with them?

This little list of lenses possess the ability to reshape any idea.

Over time, these lenses reshaped me. They forced me to deploy my own energy and actions, not the actions of someone else or something else.

What initially felt silly and awkward morphed into this post, which also happens to be the recipe for how Sunday Morning Joe re-creates itself every week for the past three years.

Along the way, the chase for magic dust faded. Eventually, I left the job.

Today, I work for Silly & Awkward. It has a job opening. You can start there tomorrow morning.

With gratitude,

Joe

Hi, I’m Joe, the owner of 5 With Joe Performance Coaching. My clients are leaders, organizations, and teams who utilize my Olympic Gold Medal performance strategies and 40 years of navigating whitewater river rapids to streamline decision making and actions when engaged in complicated river currents of business and life.

The best way to interact with me is though Sunday Morning Joe, my weekly newsletter that explores the art of improving performance, overcoming challenge, and aligning with purpose for Sunday readers in search of more depth and motivation. Subscribe HERE for free.